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Aviation History
1939
1939 - 1984.PDF
JUNE 29, 1939 ffi$m upon the story of the secret activities of this gallant little firm' which is generally supposed to operate from Heston, not Croydon. Actually, the flying boat base must be the swimming pool adjacent to Croydon Airport and the means whereby the flying-boat passengers from Brussels get to London is another example, no doubt, of the ingenious way these people work. The underground tunnel at Gatwick (where B.A. used to have their home) has been removed bodily and now, I feel sure, links the Purley Way swim-pool with the Thames. Passengers shoot violently down the tunnel into fast sailing barges which, wind and weather permit- The Four-Hundredth O N June 19 an Air France crew made the company's four- hundredth crossing of the South Atlantic, using one of the four-engined Farman landplanes. The carriage of passengers over this route, which has been promised for this year, will await the appearance of the new Liore 47 boats. Five of these are now ready and they should be in regular service on the South Atlantic in the early autumn. Re-equipping Tatas pjURING the last year Tatas, who operate internal passenger J-/ and mail services in India, bought one of Qantas Empire Airways' old D.H.86s. Recently they have purchased another of these, and they are being used, canying six passengers as well as the fairly heavy mail loads, on the Bombay-Karachi run. At the same time they have ordered three of the new Model N-r8 Beechcraft twins and these should be in service by the end of the year. With them the flying times on the various routes will be considerably reduced as the type has a cruis ing speed 'of about 170 m.p.h. In all probability the night •stop at Hyderabad on the Karachi-Madras service will be eliminated. The "Connemara" Fire ONE of the new strengthened " C " class boats, Connemara, was completely burned out off the Hythe base at South ampton while it was being refuelled on the evening of June 19. Apparently the fire started in the engine room of the refuelling barge, and it was a quarter of an hour before the flames spread to the boat itself. Unfortunately, though the connecting hawsers were released, it was not possible to uncouple the hose, and the fire reached Connemara by this route. At the time there were three men on board the flying-boat and four on the barge. They dived overboard, and six were picked up; the seventh, Mr. H. N. Vincent, is presumed to have been drowned. Connemara was one of the boats designed for Atlantic ex periments, and its destruction obviously means a further delay in our Atlantic plans, as well as another very considerable loss for those specialising in aircraft insurance. Only a week before, the Centurion was sunk in the Hoogly River, in India, on May 1 another boat, the Challenger, was lost in a some what similar manner at Mozambique, and on January 21 Cavalier was wrecked on the New York-Bermuda service. K.LM's 750th T UESDAY morning, June 20, was a jubilee day—though without festivities—for the K.L.M. line to India. On it was completed the 750th flight, with Commander Viruly as pilot. This total number of journeys has been carried through over a period of fifteen years, the first trip being made in 1924 under the control of Van der Hoop and Van Weerden Poelman. To-day there are three regular journeys a week between Amsterdam and India, linking beyond at Batavia with K.N.I.L.M. Connections with the latter began in 1928. By 1930 a fortnightly service to India was made with Fokker F7b machines. By October, rg3i, Fokker Fr2s were used, with a cruising speed of 115 m.p.h., and these were soon replaced with Fokker Fi8s carrying four passengers and crew at a cruising speed of 125 m.p.h. In 1935, D-C2S were brought into service, and, quickly following these came D-C3S, doing the journey m 5J days, cruising at 160 m.p.h. and with seats for n passen gers. Outstanding events of November 13, 1937. wer_e the successful completion of the 500th flight from Schipol to India, and the dropping of the mail surcharge to India. By January, 1941. it is estimated that the first thousand flights will have been completed on this route. Since the farst flight to India, K.L.M. machines have flown 13* million miles, while well over 20,000 passengers and over two million pounds of mail and freight have been carried. 653 Commercial Aviation ting, carry them to London. There they dock alongside the Tower of London and enter it via the Traitor's Gate, amidst muffled cheers (through their beards) from the Beefeaters. They are then thrown out by the front door and the portcullis dropped behind them and they find themselves dazed and shaken, but otherwise sound in wind and limb, in the heart of London's ceaseless traffic. Those not run over at once by buses hurriedly partake of nature's own remedy, viz., turtle soup and Pimm's .No. 1 cup according to immemorial tradition, and quite a num ber survive. Other North Country papers please copy. A. VIATOR. More Fourteens for Trans-Canada CIX additional Lockheed Fourteens have recently been >-> ordered by Trans-Canada Air Lines, and the first of the series should now have been delivered. The remaining five will be flown up to the Trans-Canada base in August. When these six new machines have been taken over the company will have fifteen 14s and five ioAs—the largest fleet of Lockheeds used by any airline company in the world. In the meantime, the French Air Ministry has ordered two more Fourteens for use by Regie Air Afrique, which is already using three machines of this type. Air Traffic Science NOT very many people in this country are aware that there is in Germany a Scientific Institute for Air Traffic. This Institute recently held its annual meeting on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of its foundation. Its work includes investigations into the air traffic returns of all the world's air transport operations and is, so far as we know, the only organisation carrying out this type of statistical .vork. The Institute is connected with the Poly technic College, Stuttgart, and its director is Prof. Carl Pirath, who, it may be remembered, is the part author of a book on aerodrome layout, recently published in this country. Atlantic Delay AT the time of going to press the Pan-American Airways' Boeing 314, Yankee Clipper, which was making the first regular mail-carrying flight across the North Atlantic, had been delayed by reports of Newfoundland fog. The boat was due to leave Shediac, New Brunswick, at 3 p.m. on Monday afternoon, on its way to Botwood, before making the crossing to Foynes and flying thence to Southampton. On board the machine, apart from Capt. H. E. Gray and his crew, were Mr. J. T. Trippe, the president and general manager of the Pan-American Airways Corporation, two of President Roosevelt's secretaries, as well as other representa tives of the company, the C.A.A., the U.S. Army and the U.S. Post Office. A Government luncheon, with Sir Kingsley Wood in the chair, had been planned for their arrival at Southampton. Meanwhile, the Atlantic Clipper, with twenty people on board, arrived at Port Washington last Sunday after the first unofficial return passenger flight. The official passenger service started yesterday. More About the Stratoliner EARLY this month the Civil Aeronautics Authority Air Safety Board issued its report on the accident to the Boe ing Stratoliner. In this, the probable cause of the disaster was given as '' structural failure of the wings and horizontal tail surfaces due to imposition of loads thereon in excess of those for which they were designed, the failure occurring in an abrupt pull-out from a dive following recovery from an inad vertent spin." As we have already mentioned in Flight, the test programme is being continued with the second Stratoliner by Mr. E. T. Allen, who is no longer an independent test pilot, but has joined the Boeing Company as director of aerodynamics and flight research. The accident, remembering the somewhat parallel case of the original Boeing "Flying Fortress," is not likely to have any effect on the future of the type, and certain weaknesses will at least have been discovered and cured. It is not usual for civil machines of this size to be tested to the extent of being spun, or even of being very sharply stalled, but recent test flights with the second Stratoliner has included experiments at unusual angles and slow speeds, and it has been found that it may be desirable to add another fin for ward of the present one in order to obtain better stability in extreme conditions. At the same time the cabin supercharging arrangements willbe tried out.
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